Neal Shusterman - Resurrection Bay

When a glacier calves, you can hear it for miles, the crashing ice echoing back and forth between the towering peaks on either side of the bay. Sometimes you feel it before you hear ita vibration in your bones that makes your whole body resonate like a tuning fork.

Bones. They know the call of the ice. They sense the relentless push of the glacier. Not just the bones of the living, but the bones of the dead, too.

Ill tell you what I knowthe strange things that happened one bleak and terrible September. Ill tell you once, but Ill deny I ever said it, and youd be better off if you forget you ever heard it. But Ill tell you all the same.

People say it all started the day that newlywed couple died at the face of Exit Glacier, but they just say that because people like things to have a beginning and an end. It makes them comfortable. The truth is, it started before any of us were born. Maybe even before there were people here at all.

This world is older and stranger than any of us knows, my dad said. Never forget that, Anika. My dads a helicopter pilot. In high seasonthats summertimehe makes his living taking tourists up into Alaskas big sky to get a firsthand look at Natures Majesty: the Harding Icefield and the many glaciers that carve their way down the mountains, feeding into Resurrection Bay. We lived in Resurrection Baymy dad, my brother, and mein the port town of Seward.

Seward, not Sewer. It was named after the guy who bought Alaska from Russia. Not our fault he had a lousy last name.

In Seward, its all summer trade. A lot of businesses close up come fall, and people leave for the winter. But there are enough uses for a helicopter pilot in Alaska that my dad has plenty of work all year-round, so we stay.

On the day those newlyweds died, Dad got quiet and paced around the house, doing things like looking in the refrigerator as if he might find something uncommon in there, then turning the TV on and off, like he forgot what show he wanted to watch.

You think he saw it, Anika? my little brother, Sammy, asked as we watched our father bumble around the house that evening.

He couldnt have seen it, I told him. He was flying people up to the ice field when it happened.

Yeah, but he coulda seen it from the sky while he was flyin.

The truth was, Dad had given that very same couple a helicopter tour the day before, but the winds were too rough to land. Still, they wanted an up close and personal experience with a glacier, so they took a self-guided walking tour, right up to the face of Exit Glacier. Its a glacier that hasnt reached the sea for maybe a thousand years. It just kind of stops a few miles inland at the silt-filled remains of its old track, which now looks more like a tornado patha long stretch of earth cleared by natures force and filled with little hills that mark the glaciers advance in winter and retreat in summer, when it melts faster than it flows. And glaciers do flow, just very, very slowly.

The newlywed couple ignored all the big red signs that said DANGER! STAY AWAY FROM FACE OF GLACIER! They went right up to it, touched it, and even got some old lady to take a picture of them while they stood in front of it.

Thats when a hunk of ice about the size of a Hummer calved off the glacier directly over their heads, and, in seconds, newlywed became newlydead.

I think the glacier kilt em on purpose, Sammy said.

Keep your opinions to yourself, I told him. Especially the stupid ones.

So that night we had soup for dinner because Dad was too distracted to cook.

I should have landed with them yesterday, he kept mum bling. If I had, they wouldnt have gone out today, and theyd still be alive.

Its not your fault, and you know it, I told him.

I know, I know; Im just saying.

My dads life is a box of what ifs neatly wrapped up in regret. Like the way he blames himself for Mom dying, even though he wasnt even in the room when Sammy was born. Its as if he thinks that if he feels bad enough about it, hell wake up one day and it wont be true.

Me, Im a realist. Things are the way they are. I move forward, kind of like a glacierslowly and with no regrets, because I know what it takes to be happy.

The next morning the picture of the newlydeads that the old lady took was all over the papersand not just the local onesbecause it caught the smiling couple and the falling piece of ice just a few feet over their heads. It was one more thing for Dad to make himself miserable over.

It was the third week of September. With fall setting in, more and more people were closing shop for the winter, escaping to wherever it was summer folk lived for the rest of the year. It wasnt exactly a ghost town here, but for the first few weeks it always felt like one until we got used to it again.

I decided to go up to Exit Glacier after school the next daynot just because of the tragedy, but because it had always been my favorite place. I could go there alone and not feel alone. I could go there with friends and somehow have a better time just because I was there. Id read my favorite books there in the glaciers shadow and had written my best poems. I was never dumb enough to get too close to its face.

Going there on that day, though it was more than just wanting to be in the company of the glacier. Maybe I was having some kind of intuition or even a premonitionnot the kind you see, but the kind you feel in your gut when you know something big is about to happen.

I went as far as last years morainethe mound of earth that marks how far the glacier pushed last winter before the summer sun melted it back. It was a good fifty yards from the face of the glacier. There were other people around, toolookie-loos watching as the workmen hacked at the ice with jackhammers and a bulldozer hauled ice awayall behind a police line that had gone up one day too late. They were trying to find the dead couple, but there was a lot of ice left to move.

I was content to keep my distance. I closed my eyes, held out my arms, and felt the glacier breathe.

Glaciers do breathe. Its a scientific fact. Cold air is heavier than hot air, and so, depending on where youre standing, you can feel the cold air breathing off the glacier, or the warm air rushing in. I always thought it was more than that, though. A glaciers breath is not a soulless thing. Its vital and fresh. Its the reason why tourists cant capture the truth of it on film. Because its not what you see; its what you feel when you stand in front of a wall of ice.

As I stood there, feeling the breath of the glacier flow around my upturned palms, I finally realized the reason I had come. I had come to ask a question.

Why?

Why did you take those people?

What had they ever done to you?

And I didnt just mean this couple, but all the people who had lost their lives to Exit Glacier over the years. Ice climbers who tried to scale it and fell. People who slipped into a crevasse and were lost. And the many who, like this sad couple, became victims of falling ice.

Why?

And then I heard a voice behind me.

You look like an idiot!

I put my arms down and turned around. I knew that voice better than anyones in town. It was Rav Carnegie, all spiky black hair and smirks. I hadnt spoken to him yet this school year, since we were giving each other a mutual cold shoulder.

At least I have to work at it, I told him. But you look like an idiot without even trying.

He laughed at that and then climbed to the top of the moraine with me. Have they found the bodies? Rav asked.